It's been about a year since Crown Builders, aka Crown Communities and Pillon Communities, arrived in full force in the Greater Augusta, Georgia new home market. It's been a great ride for them so far based on sales volume and some local builders are working hard to adapt and become competitive with this product that was somewhat "new" to our marketplace.

Locally based market leaders including Bill Beazley Homes and Keystone Homes have been reworking their product to offer better value and enhanced features to recapture lost market share. Bill Beazley Homes recently announced "Loaded 2-Story Homes - $65 per sq. foot". Based on the descriptions at least, these 4-sided brick homes on spacious home sites could put Bill Beazley Homes back in the game.

For those of you who follow new home construction in the Augusta Georgia area, it's about to get very interesting. Although local builders have been hanging on through the somewhat slow times, a few new builders to our market have had an incredible impact.

Battle lines are being drawn as the new homes are being built at a much lower cost and are loaded with upgrades previously out of reach to average consumers. Over the last few years a couple of Atlanta based builders such as Trillium as well as R&B Construction recognized Augusta as a great opportunity and started building. Although they were able to compete at a lower price point their homes were not substantially different quality than those of local "production builders". When the market turned